This is a final version of the following published document: Kambites, Carol J and Clark, Michael and Moseley, Malcolm and Owen, Stephen (2007). Community-led Plans in Oxfordshire: their potential contribution to strategic planning. Project Report. Oxfordshire County Council, Oxfordshire. Published by Oxfordshire County Council, and available online at: https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/sites/default/f... We recommend you cite the published (post-print) version. The URL for the published version is https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/sites/default/f... Disclaimer The University of Gloucestershire has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. The University of Gloucestershire makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited. The University of Gloucestershire makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. The University of Gloucestershire accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR TEXT. Community-led Plans in Oxfordshire: their potential contribution to strategic planning Final report to the Oxfordshire Partnership May 2007 Carol Kambites Michael Clark Malcolm Moseley Stephen Owen Countryside & Community Research Unit University of Gloucestershire Contents Page Contents 2 Acknowledgments 2 1. The purposes of the study 3 2. Project Method 4 3. Key trends for action in community-based plans in Oxfordshire 4 4. The usefulness of community-led planning in providing local evidence 20 for higher level strategies 5. References 27 Appendix 1: The Parish Plans and Market Town Plans examined 28 Appendix 2: Executive Summary of the ‘Patplans Report’ to the 29 Countryside Agency 2005 Appendix 3: Section 4 of the’ Bridges Report’ to the 31 Countryside Agency 2004 Appendix 4: Extract from ‘An Exciting Future for 41 Community Plans’, a report to the Market and Coastal Towns Association and South West ACRE Appendix 5: Good practice advice for local planning authorities: 46 extract from Countryside Agency guidance on the relationship between Parish Plans and the planning system Acknowledgments The work was commissioned and funded by Oxfordshire County Council on behalf of the Oxfordshire Partnership. The research team would like to thank: − Oxfordshire Rural Community Council for providing access to the Parish Plans analysed in the project, − Jeff Bishop for discussions concerning his work on the future of Community Plans for the Market and Coastal Towns Association and South West Acre Network (SWAN). 2 1: The purposes of the study This project was initiated and funded by Oxfordshire County Council on behalf of the Oxfordshire Partnership. The Partnership commissioned the Countryside & Community Research Unit (CCRU) to produce an analysis of community-led plans across the county in recent years as a contribution to the development of the evidence base for the county’s Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS) The outline specification for the work, which formed the brief for the purposes of the project was to: • assimilate information from recent parish plans and market town action plans in Oxfordshire; • collate this information in a database/spreadsheet to ensure complementarity with other existing/future databases such as national Parish Plan database; • identify key priorities and trends for actions for individual rural districts and for the county as a whole – under the 12 headings matching the 12 reports on themes for the SCS evidence base; • consider the usefulness or otherwise of community-led planning in providing local evidence for higher level strategies such as the SCS and to make recommendations for future progress as one key element of the ‘Community Life’ report as part of making the case as to why community-led planning should be supported for the future. The intention in fulfilling these purposes was to contribute to the development of a more coherent framework for community-led planning in Oxfordshire. This framework was being constructed in collaboration with the newly established Parish Plan Reference Group and a project, funded by the Carnegie Trust, that supported market towns in developing action plans and viable projects linked to Local Strategic Partnerships and Local Development Frameworks. We understand that Oxford City and Oxfordshire County Councils are engaging in parallel work designed to introduce a much stronger element of community leadership into the current area action planning process within the city. The present project is not directly concerned with that but may give useful pointers, nevertheless, to aid community-led planning in the county’s urban areas. In recent years the CCRU has undertaken a number of research projects of clear relevance to this work, notably: • analysis and advice concerning the relationships between Parish Plans and the statutory planning system (CCRU, 2002); • an evidence-based analysis of the issues and concerns raised in Parish Plans and Market Town Action Plans nationally (CCRU, 2004); • an action research project examining the linkages between, on the one hand, Parish Plans and Market Town Plans and, on the other, Local Strategic Partnerships and Community Strategies (CCRU, 2005). The experience gained by the research team from conducting these and related research projects was brought to bear in this work for Oxfordshire County Council. The first of these projects, the evaluation of community-based plans nationally, was particularly relevant in forming a context for the present study, and the Executive Summary of the final report is provided as Appendix 2 to this report. The project also noted relevant work by: 3 • Jeff Bishop and colleagues undertaken for the Market and Coastal Towns Association and South West ACRE Network (SWAN) examining the future of community plans in relation to strategic planning initiatives (Bishop, Harris, Pearce and Sylvester, 2007) and • James Derounian undertaken for Oxfordshire Rural Community Council examining the content of Parish Plans in Oxfordshire (Derounian, 2005). Extracts from four of the above five projects are included as appendices to this report for reference as they provide a useful context for the Oxfordshire study and offer some relevant generic insights into the relationship between community-based plans and higher level strategic initiatives. But while references are made in the following text to each of those projects the present project differs from all of them in that it focuses mainly on the actions proposed in community-based plans. 2. Project Method The project method adopted was very simple and comprised four main tasks: i. detailed scrutiny of 30 Parish Plans and Market Town Plans (these plans are listed in Appendix 1); ii. identification and analysis of trends for action and priorities in those plans (the analysis is set out in Section 3 below); iii. preparation of a database collating information from recent parish plans and market town action plans in Oxfordshire; (this database is submitted to Oxfordshire County Council as a separate item); iv. scrutiny of a wider range of publications and policies relating to community-based plans and preparation of commentary on the benefits of such plans in informing higher level strategies (this commentary is set out in Section 4 below). The project was completed within just less than one month in May 2007. 3. Key trends for action in community-based plans in Oxfordshire 3.1 Introduction Thirty community-based plans produced for Oxfordshire rural settlements1 and market towns were considered in terms of eleven of the twelve themes listed below.2 The first theme ‘Community Life’ is the subject of separate discussion in Section 4. 1 The term ‘rural settlements’ is used throughout the following discussion to encompass individual villages and groups of villages for which community-based plans have been prepared. 2 It is interesting to compare these 12 themes with the main concerns that characterise community-based plans nationally (see Appendix 2). 4 • Community Life • Community Safety • Economy • Children and Young People • Adult learning and workforce skills • Environment • Health, care and wellbeing • Housing • Population and migration • Access to services and travel • Recreation, leisure and culture • Spatial Oxfordshire In the case of each theme, attention is given to the type of action and, where specified in the plan, the individual or group responsible for the action. For ten of these themes at least one example of a proposed action is set out in a box at the end of each section, the exception being the population and migration theme, for which no examples of action were cited in any of the plans. Where responsibility for action was noted in the plan, this is recorded in the box. Variations by district and by type of community are also considered. However, comparisons by district were made difficult by the imbalance of plans between the four districts, particularly in the case of market towns, as shown in Table 1 below: District Number of market Number of rural Total number towns settlements of plans Cherwell 0 3 3 South Oxfordshire 7 8 15 Vale of White Horse 1 5 6 West Oxfordshire 2 4 6 Total 10 20 30 Table 1: plans considered by district and type of settlement This analysis complements the work of Derounian (2005) who analysed twenty-one Oxfordshire community-generated plans completed between 2002 and 2005, looking in particular at issues of social inclusion and exclusion. Derounian also looked in detail at two of the plans included in the present research, those for Benson and Steventon. In the following eleven sub-sections, it is emphasised that, quite apart from imbalances between the categories, the total number of plans is small and any comparisons can only be indicative of differences between districts or between types of settlement.